We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Corey Danks. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Corey below.

Corey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

I’m a small, one-person, business so I do absolutely everything myself…even when I don’t really want to. It’s funny, social media is actually how I got my start as an illustrator—via a ‘daily doodle’ project that involved me posting a drawing each day for a whole year—but as time passes and algorithms change it becomes more difficult to build an audience. This has slowly led to me changing my viewpoint on HOW to use social media. It’s no longer about achieving high follower counts or the most likes, it’s about building a connection with people, some of which could be future customers.

Most of this has happened via Twitter (anyone that calls it ‘X’ is a dork) and more recently Bluesky. A lot of the time I’m not even actually posting about my work; I’m making jokes about running a business or being a designer/illustrator, local happenings, sports, music, etc. This allows people to view me as a person and not JUST a business owner looking to sell their services, which is important to me…but if they want to hire me, that’s cool too haha.

Corey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a full-time, self-employed designer + illustrator based in Philadelphia, PA. I’ve been working for myself for just over seven years now, with the anniversary of quitting my full-time salaried position being September 8th (I have it saved in my calendar because it’s important to celebrate these things).

I started my career by abiding by the “fake it til you make it'” mantra and saying yes to damn near every project with a reasonable budget and it’s done well by me. It’s led to branding projects, merch design, poster illustrations and even a couple of murals.

Over the last seven years I’ve had the privilege of working with large businesses like the Philadelphia 76ers, the Philadelphia Flyers, Sprite, Spotify, Villanova School of Business, The Athletic, City College of New York and St. John’s University, as well as smaller, local businesses such as Stolen Sun Brewing & Roasting Co., Hello Donuts, Dough Head Pizza, Libertee Grounds, Vie Model + Talent Agency and Skype A Scientist.

In addition to client work, I also design + illustrate my own artwork, shirts, stickers, etc. and sell them in my Etsy shop. I also occasionally paint for local art shows.

Overall, I’m most proud of the fact that I’m doing everything on my own. It feels good to be mostly self-sufficient and provide client and customers with a good experience.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The number of artists, designers and illustrators that are more technically talented than me is almost endless. Regardless of how much better I’ve gotten over the course of my career, I know that I’ll never be at the very top of the talent pool. I can’t control that. However, I CAN control things like hitting my deadlines, being easy to work with and leaning into my sense of humor and knowledge of sports to maintain and attract new clients.

“Hard work beats talent” is cliché as hell (and sounds like something a tee ball coach would say) but it’s mostly true.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

While I was still working full-time at the advertising agency, I had gotten pretty fed up of working with a select few ungrateful clients on projects that I didn’t care about so I started drawing in my free time as a way to make myself feel creative again. This started as just doodling in my notebook at work but eventually led to a ‘Daily Doodle’ project, where I would post on Instagram and Twitter each day. This project led to building a small following and my first few paid illustration jobs. After awhile, I realized that I could probably use my design skills and newfound illustration abilities to go out on my own, which is exactly what ended up happening.

By the time I finished the Daily Doodle project, I had already quit my job and started working for myself full-time. Looking back, all of those doodles/drawings are SO bad but I wouldn’t be here without doing them. Sometimes, the thing that you’re doing for fun ends up being the thing that you should actually be doing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://coreydanks.com
• Instagram: @coreydanks
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/coreydanks/
• Twitter: @coreydanks
• Other: Bluesky: @coreydanks.bsky.social